Please note: The DLL course goals and program map must be read from the bottom starting from EDLD 5302, & 5303 then moving onto 5305 and so on. The large red text points to the main plan, strategy, or publication that you will have created upon completion of the course.
CSLE+COVA Capstone
EDLD 5320
Learners will synthesize their knowledge, skills, beliefs, and values gained through their digital learning and leadership experiences and present a comprehensive plan on how they developed into digital learners and leaders that can identify and promote innovation, create significant digital learning environments, and lead organizational change.
EDLD 5318
Learners will apply constructivist learning theories and instructional design principles in the development and delivery of an online course utilizing significant learning environments through selected course management tools.
EDLD 5388/5389
Learners will effectively apply an innovative teaching practice by collaborating with colleagues to evaluate their impact on learners and design and model authentic professional learning (PL) activities that are active, have a significant duration, and are specific to their discipline.
EDLD 5316
Learners will be able to navigate the emerging educational and legal challenges of a knowledge society where most K-12 students are deeply immersed in online communication, having grown up as “digital natives.”
EDLD 5317
Learners will examine a variety of digital environments and other digital resources to effectively communicate with others the practical implementation and the pedagogical value for educational use.
EDLD 5314
Learners will analyze and assess global educational technology innovation projects to determine what worked and what could be done better and apply those lessons learned to local innovation projects.
EDLD 5315
Learners will be able to assess the instructional impact the implementation of their innovation plans have on creating effective digital learning environments.
EDLD 5304
Learners will be equipped with tools to be a self-differentiated leader who can address the inevitable resistance to change that will occur when launching innovative digital learning initiatives.
EDLD 5305
Learners will identify technology innovations and embrace them as opportunities rather than challenges and proactively use those changes as catalysts to enhance their institution or district’s learning environments.
EDLD 5302
Learners will take ownership and agency over the learning process and incorporate learner choice and voice in designing authentic projects that use technology innovations as a catalyst for change in their organizational setting.
EDLD 5303
Learners will prepare and submit an ePortfolio that demonstrates their mastery of the learning outcomes for previously completed professional development work.
Checklists, progress bars, completion status checks, competency or activity focused rubrics and other related tools or methods that help a student to check a completed activity off a list may be useful in competency-based education but these activity monitors do not have a place or role in outcome-based education. They are simply not needed in outcome-based education because the focus of the learning environment and experience is not on completing an activity, rather, the focus is on the outcome which drives the context of learning. I do have to qualify that for outcomes-based education to be truly effective the use of authentic or “real world” learning opportunities are required to create the context for the learning outcome. If the learner is working toward a real-world solution, building or creating an authentic or real-world project, or even researching, analyzing, and synthesizing a plan for a real project, the context of these authentic opportunities drives the learning and the work. Working on authentic projects requires that the learner goes much deeper than simply checking an activity off a list. The trial and error and failing forward that is part of this process does not lend itself to checklists.
In the following video, we explain the difference between competency-based education and outcome-based education. It is important to note that one isn’t necessarily better than the other. They play different roles in the educational process and are used in different contexts and for different purposes. If you are measuring skills, abilities, information transfer, or a variety of other variables through a test, quiz, or even a traditional report or basic essay then you are doing competency-based education. Unfortunately, our educational system misuses the term “outcome” to refer to goals and objects which are central to competency-based education.
As you will have surmised from the video much of our educational system or what we focus on in education is competency-based. It is easy to measure, easy to check off the list, and easy to standardize. In contrast, because real-world problems and projects can be difficult to measure and are difficult to standardize, outcome-based instruction is all too often relegated to special programs, graduate programs, or elite institutions. Outcome-based education has been advocated by the likes of Dewey, Piaget, Brunner, Papert, and many other constructivists and cognitivist learning theorists. The educational historian David Labaree argues that we use the rhetoric of Dewey when we talk about deeper learning, critical and analytical thinking but we have the reality of Thorndyke who is the founder of our behaviorist and competency-based information transfer model of education which is still used today. Because there is an underlying desire to use real-world projects and many of our institutions frame their instruction toward job readiness there is a misconception that they are engaged in outcomes-based education.
This is especially the case in the trades and most other “hands-on”, or job readiness or credentialing programs. The students are being prepared to work in an office, dental clinic, a laboratory, a clinic, the construction site, and the “real world” work for which they need to be prepared, is viewed as the outcome; hence the misconception of outcome-based education. In virtually all of these programs, the “real world” task is broken down into smaller competencies and the student is taught and tested on each of these competencies as they go through their training. Many of these disciplines have a local, regional or federal credentialing exam that the student must pass to be authorized to work in that industry. Where there are no governmental exams there are often associations or other governing bodies formed to ensure standardization who manage the testing and credentialing within the industry.
I stated earlier that competency-based education has its place and we have a system of education that has evolved to fit this need. The designing a curriculum (DACUM) approach and the use of goals and objectives are useful instructional design tools that help to guide the process of breaking down larger goals into smaller objectives which can be easily measured. Due to its prevalence, which is attributed more so to the ease of standardization and measurement than pedagogical efficacy, most students have primarily had a competency-based education experience. This is how school works for most people. The outcome-based education all too often is relegated to special projects or special programs or to higher levels of education, but it doesn’t have to be. We can incorporate many of the benefits of outcome-based education even in a predominantly competency-based education culture if we simply change our focus.
By changing our focus we can bring the benefits of outcome-based education to our learning environments. Introductory level courses, test preparation, and credentialing courses, and other standardized focused instruction can be addressed with competency-based education. Higher-level courses within a program or where preparation for real-life, not just the test is the priority, is where outcome-based education and authentic learning opportunities can be implemented. Several words of caution. Preparing students for real-life not just the test takes more work on your part as the instructor and on the student’s part. It also requires that the control of the learning shift from the instructor to the learner. Since most students have had a steady diet of competency-based education in primary and secondary school and for the most part in higher education, many will not be prepared to take control of their own learning. The research is very clear that even though they will do better active and dynamic learning and have significantly higher grades they will not like it (see Harvard Study). In the following video we explore the consequences of this shift in control over the learning.
If you create a significant learning environment that gives your learner choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities (CSLE+COVA) you will enable them to go much deeper into learning and help them revitalize their learner’s mindset.
This has been a long explanation for why I don’t use checklists, progress bars, completion status checks, competency or activity focused rubrics and other related tools or methods that help a student to check a completed activity off a list. These tools play a role in competency-based education where you simply have to check a completed skill or activity off a list. Those activity monitoring tools don’t have a place in outcomes-based education because the focus isn’t the incremental skill or activity, it is the bigger project…and what they will do with that project. All the skills and activities that the learner acquires as they go along are theirs and once they own them they become part of their learning process.
My focus is outcome-based learning and my goal is to help prepare my learners for life, not just a test. I am willing to push the boundaries of cognitive dissonance and challenge my students to take control of their learning in ways which before, they may not have done.
References
Bruner, J. S. (1966). Toward a theory of instruction. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to philosophy of education. New York, NY: Macmillan.
Ginsburg, H., & Opper, S. (1969). Piaget’s theology of intellectual development: An introduction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Labaree, D. F. (2005). Progressivism, schools, and schools of education: An American romance. Paedagogica Historica, 41(1&2), 275-288. Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ748632
Papert, S. (1993). The children’s machine: Rethinking school in the age of the computer. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Papert, S. (1997). Why school reform is impossible (with commentary on O’Shea’s and Koschmann’s reviews of “The children’s machine”). The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 6(4), 417–427.
Piaget, J. (1964). Development and learning. In R.E. Ripple & V.N. Rockcastle (Eds.), Piaget Rediscovered: A Report on the Conference of Cognitive Studies and Curriculum Development (pp. 7–20). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.
Whenever two terms are juxtaposed like Feedforward Vs. Feedback the natural tendency is to ask which is better, or which term or related method will give us what effects or lead to what consequences. I am going to argue that we want to move toward feedforward rather than fall back on feedback. Why? Feedforward is the formative process of providing educative (Fink, 2013) or forward-looking perspectives (Goldsmith, 2009 & Hattie, 2009) that one can use to build on or improve. Feedforward points to opportunities and provides pathways for improvement and growth. In contrast, feedback is summative because it is backward-looking at what was wrong. It doesn’t generally provide pathways to improvement. At least in the more traditional way that feedback is applied.
We are recommending a move from feedback to feedforward that will include the following :
Consider the receiver not just the giver of feedback
Equip the receiver with a growth mindset
Build a culture of trust
Adopt a “What worked & What can you do better” approach to feedforward
Create a significant learning environment that promotes choice, ownership & voice through authentic learning opportunities
What evidence is there to support this claim and the recommended process?
We have one of two options when exploring the credibility of these or any claims. The first is to read all the related literature and conduct a detailed analysis that will inform a conclusion and related pros and cons. The second is to find someone who has done this analysis and has summarized the analysis in a tutorial, or a synthesis post like this one.
Considering the Receiver First
The Science of Receiving Feedback
Helping your Learner Adopt a Growth Mindset
Fixed VS Growth Mindset
Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset
The power of believing that you can improve | Carol Dweck
The Power of belief — mindset and success | Eduardo Briceno | TEDxManhattanBeach
Growing a Growth Mindset
In the post How to Grow a Growth Mindset, I point to the key factors and research that show that promoting a growth mindset like one would promote a positive mental attitude will not work and that the growth mindset requires modeling and a significant learning environment that promotes this perspective both in spirit and in structure.
You will find a very useful Fixed vs Growth Mindset graphic and a short comparison of how the Fixed Vs Growth Mindset is equivalent to the Print Vs Digital Information Age on the blog post Fixed Vs Growth Mindset = Print Vs Digital Information Age
Obviously Carol Dweck’s book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success is definitely worth the read and should be one of those books that all educators have on their bookshelf or in their Kindle or Audible library.
Learner’s Mindset
Learner’s Mindset – a state of being where people act on their intrinsic capacity to learn and respond to their inquisitive nature that leads to viewing all interactions with the world as learning opportunities. This state enables one to interact with and influence the learning environment as a perpetual learner who has the capacity to use change and challenges as opportunities for growth.
To fully explore the Learner’s Mindset and see how it is different than the growth mindset or the Innovator’s Mindset consider the following:
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Penguin Random House.
Fink, L. D. (2013). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses. Jossey-Bass.
Goldsmith, M. (2009). Take It to the next level: What got you here, won’t get you there. Simon & Schuster Audio/Nightingale-Conant.
Goldsmith, M. (2003). Try feedforward instead of feedback. Journal for Quality and Participation, 38–40.
Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(81), 81–112.
Hirsch, J. (2017). The feedback fix: Dump the past, embrace the future, and lead the way to change. Rowman & Littlefield.
Stone, D., & Heen, S. (2015). Thanks for the feedback: The science and art of receiving feedback well (even when it is off base, unfair, poorly delivered, and frankly, you’re not in the mood) (Vol. 36). Penguin.
I have been an avid reader from the time I learned how to read. In first grade, I read over 150 books and the next closest student read less than a dozen. I spent a lot of time in libraries over the years so books have been a big part of my life. Now with Kindle and Audible, I take my reading with me where everywhere I go and it has only gotten better. I often listen to a book a week and when you factor in all the other traditional reading I will read 60-80 books a year.
Over the past few years, I have been using Goodreads to track my reading but I am finding that I haven’t been as diligent in maintaining my book list as I should. I am often asked by students or other folks what books I would recommend and once I find out what they are really interested in learning I can point to an assortment of titles that I have read and can recommend.
The intention of the following list is to provide a place where I can point people to a book that they may find useful. I think the reason that I may not have started a list like this much earlier is that I always assumed that I should write a short annotation, review, or summary for each of the entries. I have decided to not do this because it would just take too long at this point. But, I do plan on doing a top 10 list for most of the categories at some point which would include a review or a minimum a detailed annotation. The books are separated into different categories and if the book is on this list I have read it (often more than once) and I recommend it. I will be adding the books on a regular basis and adding additional categories as necessary. For example, I haven’t included any of the books on parenting, theology, science, philosophy, and a few other areas—YET.
I haven’t ranked or rated the books in the categories below and for the most part, the most recent books I have read or reread are closer to the top of the list in each category. I must repeat I only put books on this list that I have read completely and would recommend. I have read so many more that obviously aren’t on this list.
PLEASE NOTE: All of the hyperlinks are from the Amazon Associates program, and if you choose to buy the book through the links below I’ll get a small commission that I use to buy and read more books from Amazon and Audible. When you read as much as I do the cost of all these books does add up so please consider helping me feed my reading habit. If you want to buy the book, but don’t want to use the link, feel free to search for it on Amazon or Audible (or anywhere).
The following are the links to articles, blog post, YouTube videos, TED Talks and books that were used or referenced in the PIDP 3100 Foundations of Adult Education course:
Passive Voice
What’s Passive Voice? Consider this extreme example of passive voice:
It has been observed in a frequency all too significant that students upon submission of their written assignments have been inclined to have chosen a manner of composition that is too often far from one that is direct enough to be understood as conveying meaning in a fashion that is most expedient.
Same idea in Active voice:
Students too often submit assignments where they don’t directly write what they mean.
OR
Students too often turn in work where they don’t directly say what they mean to say.
Use the following sites to help you prevent passive voice:
Fixed VS Growth Mindset
The power of believing that you can improve | Carol Dweck
The Power of belief — mindset and success | Eduardo Briceno | TEDxManhattanBeach
You will find a very useful Fixed vs Growth Mindset graphic and a short comparison of how the Fixed Vs Growth Mindset is equivalent to the Print Vs Digital Information Age on the blog post Fixed Vs Growth Mindset = Print Vs Digital Information Age
You will find this video, learning philosophy and links to many of my presentations, and my favorite blog posts on my blog About page.
The Red Pencil & Why Teacher Code of Silence
In the post The key to improving student achievement I point to the Educational thought leader of the 20th Century Theodore Sizer who laments the fact that education hasn’t changed from his days as a youth in the 1930s when he was assessed by his teacher who used a red pencil to check off his grammar skills. Sizer also explains why teachers enter into a code of silence where they agree to not comment on what their colleagues do in their classroom as long as their colleagues agree to not comment on what they are doing.
The Head Won’t Go Where the Heart Hasn’t Been
Benjamin Bloom argued that we need to address all the domains and find a balance. We often overemphasize the cognitive domain, relegate the psychomotor to the trades or other overtly physical disciplines and limit the affective domain to ethical or values issues. This limitation will severely limit the change that is necessary for learning. The blog post The Head Won’t Go Where the Heart Hasn’t Been post includes a more detailed explanation of the importance of the affective domain and has links to the Behavioral Science (BS) Guys video How to Change People Who Don’t Want to Change and also a related TED Talk Why TED Talks don’t change people’s behaviors.
Organizational Change
Change can also be difficult because sometimes people like things the way that they are. The post People how like this stuff…like this stuff explores the 4 steps that you need to follow to be successful with organizational change. These 4 steps have become part of the Masters Course EDLD 5304: Leading Organizational Change.
Change in Focus
If you really want to improve your practices and pedagogies, then you need to get clear on your primary focus because your focus will determine where you will go. The use of authentic learning opportunities can help you and your organization stay focused on helping your learners to realize their full potential and grow into future leaders who will help improve our world.
Because the century-old challenge of content delivery has been solved by mobile technology we can move forward to use authentic learning opportunities that provide the context for learning.